Charles Davenport

Charles Davenport (1 June 1866-18 February 1944) was an American biologist and a prominent leader of the Eugenics movement. During his time at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the early 1900s, he began an investigation of inherited personality and mental traits, publishing hundreds of papers.

Biography
Charles Davenport was born in Stamford, Connecticut in 1866. He became a biologist, and he became director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1904, where he founded the Eugenics Record Office in 1910. He began a series of investigations into aspects of the inheritance of human personality and mental traits, and he generated hundreds of papers and several books on the genetics of alcoholism, pellagra (vitamin deficiency), criminality, feeble-mindedness, sea faringness, bad temper, intelligence, manic depression, and the biological effects of race crossing. He believed in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species, especially by discouraging reprodudction by people with genetic defects or "undesirable traits", or by encouraging people with "desirable traits" to have children. He became the most important social planner in the country as the leader of the Eugenics movement, and scientists and political leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt and other Democratic and Republican nominees listened to his advice. People in Europe also listened to his views, which spread across the oceans. He died in 1944.